The notable farms: two centuries on the same ground

1837 — 2026

Measured in generations: Allen County's most distinctive farm honor is not size but tenure. Indiana's Hoosier Homestead Award, created in 1976, recognizes farms held by one family for a century or more — Centennial at 100 years, Sesquicentennial at 150, Bicentennial at 200, on more than twenty acres — and Allen County's roll reaches back nearly to the county's founding: the earliest Allen County homestead on the record is the Paul Parker farm, dated November 5, 1837. The named farms on the award lists carry the county's settlement in their dates: the Matthias and Wiegman farms from 1860, the Fulk farm from 1861, the Doctor and Kurtz farms from 1872, the Dafforn and Hart farms from 1874, the Hille and Springer farms from 1875, and, at the 2026 ceremony, the Griebel farm from 1845 with a Sesquicentennial Award and a second Springer farm from 1911 with a Centennial. One showplace farm left the county's agriculture for its parks: Colonel Thomas W. Swinney's west-side farm, leased to the city in 1869, became Swinney Park — its story belongs to the Parks record and is cross-referenced there. The county's show stock survives in the press record at its photographic best in the spring of 1919, when the Journal Gazette's full page of Allen County farm scenes showed a herd of pure-bred Aberdeen-Angus cattle in Eel River Township and a registered Poland China brood sow on Henry Fortmeyer's farm in Washington Township, alongside the Lake Township horse teams and the Heffelfinger farm's tractor plow — the county's mixed moment, purebred herds and registered sows on farms where the three-horse hitch had not yet given way. It is the fair's premium lists in photographic form: improvement, registered and bred up, as the county's leading farmers practiced it between the wars.

Sources:

1. Indiana State Department of Agriculture, Hoosier Homestead Award program (created 1976) and its award lists, as compiled by ACGSI, "Agriculture in Allen County, Indiana," and the state fair award releases of 2025–2026 — the program's terms; the Paul Parker farm of November 5, 1837 as the earliest Allen County homestead; and the named Allen County farms and years in the entry (Matthias 1860, Wiegman 1860, Fulk 1861, Doctor 1872, Kurtz 1872, Dafforn 1874, Hart 1874, Hille 1875, Springer 1875 and 1911, Griebel 1845).
2. Parks & City Planning — Colonel Thomas W. Swinney's lease of his west-side farm land to the city in 1869 and its life as Swinney Park; cross-referenced, not retold.
3. Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, "Spring Scenes On Allen County Farms," April 13, 1919 (via ACGSI) — the pure-bred Aberdeen-Angus herd in Eel River Township, the registered Poland China brood sow on the Henry Fortmeyer farm in Washington Township, and the Lake Township and Heffelfinger farm scenes.